FACTS which contradict what is taught in the universities and which even run counter to the assumptions made by critics of misandry.

Sunday, April 6, 2014

Husband-Killing Syndicates in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, 1882-1889

In the period dealt with here, “Hungary” was commonly used
to refer to any region within the Austro-Hungarian Empire outside Austria
proper. The husband-killing syndicates collected by The Unknown History of MISANDRYcontain cases which occurred in present-day Hungary, Romania and Romania
which were reported as having taken place in “Hungary.” Some of the reports of
this type of crime would refer to earlier cases noting that such organized
poisoning rackets were common in the region. The following article is of
particular interest in that in addition to the news report of a new case in
1899, it makes note of three earlier cases: from 1882, 1897 and 1890. Out of
these four only one took place in present-day Hungary; two were in Serbia; one
took place in Romania.

Below the article you will find the synopses of the four
cases mentioned (taken from the comprehensive collection of “Husband-Killing Syndicates.” Such cases continued to be reported in the region up to the mid
1930s (1900, 1901, 1903, 1905, 1906, 1911, 1912, 1926, 1928, 1929, 1930, 1931,
1933, 1935).

***

FULL TEXT: London, July 4. – An extraordinary criminal trial
has taken place in Hungary, 18 married women being charged with poisoning their
husbands and children with arsenic.

Nine of them were acquitted, and the other nine were found
guilty, and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment.

[The wholesale poisoning of husbands by their wives is a
crime that of late years has been peculiar to Hungary. In August, 1882, some 25
women were convicted of poisoning their husbands at Gross Bedakerch, a woman
named Theckla Popov being said to be the head of the conspiracy. In July, 1890,
10 women were tried at Mitrowitz for poisoning their husbands with arsenic. Two
were acquitted and four were sentenced to death, and four to penal servitude.
In July, 1897, four women were sentenced to death for poisoning husbands, and
other relatives, at Buda Pesth.

A note on names:
It should be note that names of persons and places from there regions are
spelled in numerous different ways since a great many ethnicities resided these
and used a great variety of languages. For example, Serbian was spoken in
Serbia, but German was the official language of the ruling empire while the
following other languages being spoken there include Albanian, Hungarian,
Romanian, Slovak, Rusyn, Croatian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Romani, Czech,
Bosnian, Vlach, Bunjevac, Macedonian, Montenegrin.

Further, English language transliterations of these names
use many different spellings for the same name and vary in their choice of
which original language form as the basis for their transliteration. In short,
working with English language sources is extremely messy and confusing work.

***

***

Explanations for the Hungarian murder syndicates that are
commonly found are based on theories that are now being demonstrated to be
faulty. Thus we must resist interpreting the phenomenon of the various Eastern
European murder syndicates – with all their individual differences and
complexities – through the simpleminded theories and claims that have been put
forth in the standard literature thus far.

An effort is now being made to take an objective look at the family in Eastern
Europe without being hampered by the constraints of old-fashioned “patriarchy”
theories and “social constructionist” reductionism, as is indicated by a recent
call for papers by The Hungarian Historical Review. Here is an excerpt from
that call for papers:

“Historians who studied personal narrative sources that had survived in large
numbers (such as correspondences, diaries, and memoirs) fervently disputed the
Ariés-Hajnal-Stone thesis, according to which given the extended nature of the
family, the role of emotional bonds in family life was negligible in Eastern
Europe. The opponents of the thesis argue, however, that behind the image of
patriarchal family life that emerges from the wealth of literature on
matrimonial and marital counseling, one finds innumerable everyday gestures expressive
of loving, amicable, and supportive relationships between spouses.”